Mailbag

The Pirates played to form in their six games with the two best teams in baseball, the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, losing four and winning two. After picking up a win Saturday night over the Tigers, who played shoddy defense to hand the home towners a 9-2 win, the Pirates today did what they do best, bowing 9-8, their 24th one-run loss in 32 opportunities. After falling behind 9-2, buried by poor pitching performances by Ian Snell and John Grabow, they rallied for six runs in the seventh, but couldn't get over the hump. In other news, the sun came up in the east this morning.

The Bucs scored 23 runs in three games off the Tigers' excellent pitching staff, which for most teams would translate into more than one victory. But even in scoring eight runs, their uncanny inability to win games emerged. They left a combined total of 22 men on base, with Jose Castillo, Humberto Cota and Jack Wilson being responsible for five each. The Pirates had the bases loaded and one out in the ninth before Castillo struck out and Cota hit a ball up the middle that was deflected by pitcher Todd Jones and fielded by second baseman Placido Polanco, who threw Cota out. As is their practice, the Pirates bemoaned their bad luck on Cota's ball. That's what losing teams do. Yo, Adrian, would being down seven runs early in the game have anything to do with the loss?

So on to the Buccin' Ear's first shake of The Pirates of Penance mailbag. A good rustling of the sack produced mostly a flutter of moths, but there were a few cyber missives that fell out.

Zack from Shanghai mocked the Buccin' Ear's elegaic "Time to Move On" post, at once an ode to the Pirates' past glory and a lament for the current state of affairs.

"Woe is me, O woe is me," Zack wrote. "Try World Cup soccer instead!"

Well, Zack, much as the Buccin' Ear's psyche might be soothed by shifting his attention from the Buccos to something more worthwhile, he is afraid that soccer isn't the answer. He breathlessly awaited the outcome of the Trinidad-Sweden match recently, and asked a coworker how it came out. "Nothing-nothing," she replied. "What, they haven't played yet?" he inquired. "No, that was the score," she said impatiently. And they call baseball boring.

Paul from Denver reacted to the recent post "Halfway to Nowhere," which questioned a decade and a half of Pirate futility by pointing to the team's small market status:

"As with most teams in small- to middle-size markets (Indians, Brewers, Reds, Royals, etc.), unless there is a compelling reason for younger players to stick around -- a team mentor, an ownership group that is honestly looking to build a winner, or loyalty to a city's fan base -- the Pirates will forever be forced to develop good, young talent and watch it be snatched up by big-market teams with deeper pockets. "

The argument that the Pirates and other small market teams don't succeed because the economics of the game won't allow them to is one commonly advanced, and it certainly has merit. However, it does not fully explain the lack of success of the Pirates. First, as The Buccin' Ear noted, the job of the front office has at least as much to do with evaluating talent as it has to do with deciding how much money to spend. The Pirates' talent evaluation, as we have seen, has been woeful, while other small-market teams, including the A's and Twins, have been able to attract, keep and restock good players consistently. Baseball is like any other business: it helps to have massive amounts of capital, but it doesn't guarantee success, and the converse is true. Michael Lewis's Moneyball famously showed Oakland GM Billy Beane's ability to put together teams that were based on a different model for evaluating talent.

Interestingly, the general consensus among the Pittsburgh press is that the Pirates aren't losing money. The team's problem is that it spends its dollars foolishly and has proven incapable of arriving at a consistent approach for developing young players.

Teams that preserve their young talent -- assuming, again, that they are smart enough to evaluate it correctly in the first place -- have a chance, even with small payrolls, of achieving success. One of the best examples is the Indians, previously discussed in this blog, who were on the short list of worst teams in baseball for more than three decades before they started finding and stockpiling good young players in the early '90s. By 1995, they were in a World Series, had a brand-new stadium and a rejuventated fan base. They reinvented themselves again recently and, it says here, will have great success again, their disappointing 2006 notwithstanding.

An anonymous poster writes, in response to "Eye of the Tiger":

Why can't the Pirates emulate what Detroit has done? They were the laughing stock of MLB a few years a go. Now they are a contender. When oh when will the curent Pirates ownership sell this team?

See above. The interesting thing about the Tigers' pitching staff is that only Justin Verlander was originally drafted by the team. Detroit picked up Jeremy Bonderman, Mike Maroth and Nate Robertson from other teams, and of course Kenny Rogers is a veteran acquisition who has helped solidify the staff on a short-term basis. Don't forget also the value of patience. In 2003, Bonderman and Maroth lost 19 and 21 games, respectively. It's easy to say now that all the Tigers had to do was wait for them to mature, but it doesn't work that way. Seasons like those could easily have ruined those two pitchers' self-confidence, but the Tigers' coaching staff apparently was able to help them survive their trial by fire.

Pirate pitchers, on the other hand, have nearly universally gone downhill as their careers with the team have progressed. Kip Wells is a classic example. In 2003, he was 10-9 with a 3.28 ERA. Since then he has gone 13-28 with an ERA well over 5.00 and has been a complete disaster since his return to the team this year.

Finally, as noted above, the Pirates are doing okay financially, so it's hard to say that a sale of the team is imminent, and as Bob Smizik of the Post-Gazette recently pointed out, it's hard to get an answer from ownership about anything these days, much less their financial plans.

The Buccin' Ear will end this mailbag session with the following note from a reader in Australia:

"Your site is on top of my favourites - Great work I like it."

Thanks, mom.